


A dusty town story

by SharpestRose



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where you go when the credits roll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A dusty town story

Dawn's never had too many problems, as far as the whole sex thing goes. Not that she's some skanky wham-bam-drive-through type or anything, because that's completely gross and unsanitary and frankly, there just aren't that many people worth the whole production in the first place. But there's never been any scenes or dilemmas worthy of a movie of the week, unless it was a particularly niche-marketed movie of the week.

Like the time when Willow found out she'd been writing Harry Potter slash and just said "Dawnie, you're an _author!_ " and then bought her lots of notebooks and pens and books about Story Crafting. Dawn didn't see how it was particularly noteworthy that she'd ended up writing, really, considering that she had all these alternate universes literally in her blood and stuff.

She spent the summer after Willow went wacky imagining different realities where Tara got a happily ever after. Maybe Dawn had the power to do that, maybe it made things better somewhere not so far away. In relative terms, because Dawn was beginning to suspect that the board for the real game of life was kind of, well, large. But not so far away, in a light-years sense. Dawn sometimes suspects that Tara was the first person she ever fell in love with.

Dawn can't imagine ever having _sex_ with Tara, though. Phrases like 'making love' and 'joining' and 'sensing the shared spirit' kinda make her wanna barf, and she suspects that for all there was to love about Tara any intimacy would have involved these terms and then some. Maybe that's the reason that it was so easy to fall into bed (well, technically linoleum for the actually falling, but there was bedding involved eventually when they got upstairs) with Faith.

Faith uses all kinds of words that Dawn's only heard before in the context of giggling behind her hand at sleepovers in middleschool or in the stories saved on little black diskettes in the bottom of her bookbag. Faith uses _blowjob_ for when she wants to make Dawn whimper and sob and groan with nothing but her mouth. Faith's vocabulary comes off like the tough-talking character from a certain type of teen movie, the kind of words nobody actually uses in conversation, except that Faith does.

Faith says things like "Christ, you Summers women, you'd think I'd have lost the addiction by now," before stubbing her cigarette out and curling against Dawn in the rumpled bedsheets. Dawn lies there in Faith's arms and thinks about how she, for all her idle teenage thoughts about lust and fluid-ridden physical acts, had never properly imagined what Tara and Willow, or Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, or any other combination of two sets of sloping hips and soft girlflesh, actually felt like when they lay like this.

For a while in the beginning, when Sunnydale is gone and they're all free like paper in the wind, Faith is still having sex with Principal Wood. Dawn's had her share of daydreams about teachers and the like, so she gets the appeal, but it's all so new and grown up to be walking downtown and browsing the shops and then running into him (they've all ended up in the same general area, as if the world still feels to big after the claustrophobia of the hellmouth district) and then thinking _this morning her breath smelt like cigarettes and last night's ice cream gone stale when she kissed me, because her toothbrush is still in your bathroom_. Dawn wishes she still had normal, teenage friends, so she could say nonchalantly "Oh, yeah, Principal Wood's ok. My girlfriend sleeps with him a few nights a week."

Then Faith and Principal Wood break up, and that's just as easy and painless as it was when they were together, and Dawn thinks that maybe it's just hype that people buy into, that relationships are supposed to be this big awful mess all the time. Things seem to be going pretty peachy for her, after all, and there's no looming insanity or evil or mayhem on the horizon.

Dawn says this to Faith, and Faith laughs and says "Duh, stupid, that's because that stuff's _behind_ us," and Dawn realises that this is true, she's weathered her fair quota of difficult character-building trauma and doesn't have to worry about more coming her way anymore.

About eight months or so after Sunnydale went the way of legwarmers and batwing sleeves, Faith and Dawn decide to relocate. It's not that they don't want to be around everyone from before or anything, they just need to breathe different air for a little while. It's no big, wanderlust is becoming common amongst the survivors with no real task given to them in the brave new world. Andrew and Xander are somewhere way up north, last Dawn heard, and Kennedy's in Peru until April.

They catch buses going to wherever sounds the most interesting, lots of little dusty towns with little dusty stories that Dawn pins down in her notebooks for later. If life itself becomes stale, Dawn thinks she might try writing stories. It seems like something she could do.

Faith jokes that she'll become a trucker, and wear a cap with a slogan on the front and speak CB radio jargon. Dawn counters that she'll wear candy-pink pendal pushers and a shade of lipstick to match and tease her hair up tall. They give themselves new identities, introduce each other as different names to every face they meet.

Three weeks in to the adventure they're walking down a main street, past a garage, and Faith stops and does a double-take. There's a guy wiping his hands on a rag, shirtsleeves pushed up and marked with occasional streaks of oil or miscellaneous car juice. He smiles guardedly when he sees Faith.

"Well, if it ain't the local chapter of Evil Rehab," Faith drawls, amusement playing about her own lips. "Angel would be proud of us, being productive members of society all straight and narrow."

The man snorts and walks closer, holding one wiped-clean hand out to shake Faith's own. "Faith. Can't say I expected to ever see you again."

"What, you thought trying to kill me and then making sure I got locked up real good in the big house would keep this little black duck down? You've got a lot of lessons left before you graduate from the school of me, Lindsey."

Dawn likes Lindsey, who teaches her how to play Chili Peppers' songs on his guitar and lets her make fun of country music as much as she likes. They move in with Lindsey, and Faith starts bed-hopping before the week's over. Dawn feels slightly guilty that she relishes having the whole bed to herself to sprawl out on sometimes, and wonders if Faith has ever gone very long sleeping by herself.

Correspondence class is much cooler and more challenging than ordinary school, so Dawn doesn't bother finding out about the local places she might go. People who have girlfriends who have boyfriends and write stories about little towns in the middle of nowhere full of curious people don't have to go to ordinary schools like normal people.

Dawn wishes she was a bit younger, or a bit older, because her body's in this really boring between-stage where it's just sort of _there_. She can't play Lolita with angles and awkwardness and coquettish charm, and she's yet to swell out into curves like Faith's. Maybe, considering how much Buffy didn't grow voluptuous sex-goddess round bits, Dawn's going to be waiting quite a while for that part.

She imagines wandering into Lindsey's garage while he's fixing up some dented pickup, lying on one of those wheel-thingies that go underneath the car. She'd be a glorious creature who isn't stuck in any dull either-neither middle ground, with long legs and short shorts and shiny hair. Kinda like Shannon Elizabeth, only still Dawn.

And she could ask him if he wants a soda, and he would say that he wants a beer, and then bring him one out and impress him with the way she could twist the top off with ease. They'd get to talking and Dawn would admit, bashfully, that she's never really seen a guy naked. Which is true, mostly. In true fantasy-daydream style, Lindsey would procede to educate her in such matters.

Because she doesn't really know the details of this bit, Dawn improvises. She doesn't know how guys taste, but imagines it's not hugely different from the flavours she's discovered on Faith. Not exactly the same, of course, but in the general theme. Same way that different types of milkshake still taste like a milkshake regardless.

It's fun to daydream, but Dawn doesn't mind holding off the scene for real. It probably will come eventually, because Lindsey's nice. Very serious about Reform and Redemption and Second Chances, but then again so's Faith and Dawn's learnt to just sit and smile and nod during those conversations. So, yeah, Lindsey's cool, and Dawn knew that girls and women were different from each other but never guessed that men could be so much more fascinating than boys.

But she's got a whole big life ahead of her now, with all sorts of closure over and done with. One night, near the beginning of the new era or whatever Andrew's decided to call it this week, Buffy had a big freakout when she realised Mom's body was gone along with the rest of Sunnydale. She was crying and then Faith went over and held her and said "it's ok, she's still there in your heart", which Dawn thought was a kind of unexpected response from Faith. Then again, it's always a mistake to try and predict Faith's reactions to the world ahead of time.

Anyway, closure. Dawn's had it in spades, several times over. She's done with that stuff, she's ready to amble on into the long future with its dusty towns and distance education and pens and paper and ideas rattling around in her head and a lover named Faith and maybe, not so far off, a lover named Lindsey as well.

Sometimes the mornings get cold, and Dawn regrets her enjoyment of a big bed all to herself. Then she slips out from under her covers, her hair doubtlessly looking pretty horrid, and pads down the hallway to where Faith and Lindsey press together against the chill. Dawn clambers up beside them, like a little kid hopping in with Mom and Dad. Actually, scratch that metaphor, because that leads to all kinds of wrong places.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Lindsey often asks her. Sometimes Dawn shakes her head and smiles, and just enjoys the warmth and closeness until it's time to get up. Sometimes she nods, and Lindsey strokes her sleep-knotted hair with his hand that's got the scar around the wrist and says, in a soft kind voice, "it's ok, Dawn. Nightmare's over now."

On those mornings, Dawn feels like maybe she'll finish her story, about the small town and the weird people, with a happy ending.  



End file.
